Fighting in the Iraq war and working as an Army lawyer is not a "real job," according to Democratic Maryland gubernatorial candidate Douglas Gansler, who is the state’s attorney general.

Gansler is running against Maryland Lt. Gov. Anthony Brown, also a Democrat, for the state’s top job. He slammed Brown’s military service at a gubernatorial candidates forum in Bethesda on Monday, The Baltimore Sun reports.

"I'm running against somebody who has never managed anything, never run anything," Gansler said. "There are ads about how he was a lawyer in Iraq — and that's all fine and good — but this is a real job. And we need to have somebody who actually has leadership experience, who has done projects."

His comments were in response to a question about what the state had learned from its highly flawed rollout of Obamacare, according to Fox News.

Brown was awarded a Bronze Star for a 10-month deployment to Iraq in 2004.
A graduate of Harvard University and Harvard Law School, Brown is a colonel in the U.S. Army Reserves, according to the Maryland governor’s website. Brown also served five years as an Army helicopter pilot in Germany during the 1980s, his campaign told the Sun, and worked as a lawyer in Baghdad’s Green Zone.

Veterans groups are outraged at the remarks and have demanded an apology.

"It’s a horrible insult to all those men and women who put their lives on the line, and especially those who died, in service to this country," said Jon Soltz, an Iraq War veteran and chairman of VoteVets.org, the Sun reports. Vote Vets has endorsed Brown.

After Gansler’s remarks sparked furor across the Internet, his campaign issued a statement saying Gansler has "the utmost respect for [Brown’s] military service and for veterans."

"The point I was trying to make is that Anthony Brown's only attempt to lead as lieutenant governor was the unmitigated debacle of the health exchange website that denied Marylanders access to healthcare and cost taxpayers nearly $200 million."